(Super)Hero the Hard Way
by kingofthewilderwest
Summary: It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... Stoick the Vast? In a modern world where Berk is full of superheroes fighting against the League of Outcasts, power-less Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third has to struggle to find some way to become appreciated for who he is. Through his crime-fighting journey, Hiccup learns that, while he might not have powers, he can become a Hero the Hard Way.
1. Chapter 1: Raid

The caterwaul of furious sirens shrieking like banshees suddenly exploded city-wide, smothering skyscrapers and suburban neighborhoods alike in a wall of pure, piercing _noise_. The screams of ten thousand possessed cats could not compete with the cacophony shoving everyone frantically indoors; and indeed felines and canines and every living creature within a five mile radius rushed inside and sequestered themselves in corners, crumpled to the ground, and hid best they could from the unceasing aural blare. Families rushed from cars indoors and hid under desks or deep within basements, clamping their ears and peering nervously, very nervously, toward the source of the wailing.

For above the eruption of screaming sirens rose the booms of real explosions. The screams of not just an automated warning system, but the screams of real victims dying fiery deaths.

Only one civilian boy rushed _toward_ his bedroom window rather than running away and locking himself in a closet or bathroom. He threw himself upon the glass, peering outward toward the street from the seventh floor of his apartment, and stared intently – almost eagerly – out toward the darkened pre-dawn skyline. Eyes roved city streets to search for any sign of the action unfolding outside. The red burst of fire. The flash of a supervillain raining terror upon the city. Anything. Anything at all to involve him in a piece of the action.

He very quickly darted away from the window for just a moment, hands shaking uncontrollably, to fumblingly punch the television on in his room before charging back to stare outside. He almost tripped over a number of computer parts, textbooks, and half-completed personal projects in the process of returning to his sentry post. And as his eyes desperately scoured over stoplights and stopped cars and streetlamps and abandoned sidewalks, he listened closely to the voice of the news on in the background.

"…unexpected aerial attack on the corner of Hope Avenue and Twelfth Street…"

He darted his eyes to the north, squinting at urban lights. Twelfth Street was not so far northwest of here. Was that… movement… he spotted on top of that one apartment building?

"…reports of Dagger, Savage, Norbert the Nutjob, and up to a dozen other supervillains in the League of Outcasts."

A male voice – another newscaster to complement the steady mezzosoprano female voice who had earlier been speaking – took over, inquiring in a somehow informative manner, "Any signs of Alvin the Treacherous?"

"None."

_Still enough supervillains for me to see some action,_ he thought. The teen vigilantly stared into the street, heart pounding somewhat nervously, somewhat excitedly, in blood-rushing anticipation. He could feel his entire body jitter, arms quivering, knees shaking and knocking one against each other involuntarily.

"Berk's leading superheroes are on their way to combat…"

And then he saw it.

He nearly threw himself into the window pane from the sheer exuberant excitement.

A flash of light. Quick bursts of color and movement in the near-distance. Just enough green and yellow darting across the rooftops to identify some Outcast supervillain. And just a moment after he noticed the rouge charging on top the skyline, an enormous global burst of fire mushroomed out of an upper apartment window.

Then that supervillain collided into a statuesque figure.

Even from his distance peering in the darkness, leaning eagerly against his bedroom window, the boy could see enough of the action to know what happened.

The city's superheroes had arrived to save the day.

The imposing block who halted the suddenly-started Outcast idly wiped a puff of flame from his left armored shoulder pad and leaned in menacingly, preparing to hurl his foe from the rooftop with the superstrength he possessed.

"Chief of Security and famed superhero Skullcrusher takes on Mogadon in a clearly one-sided battle…"

Ten more suddenly jumped him. Shadows sparring on the roofs of Berk. Punches, rock-like fists, an old-fashioned brawl as the impossibly strong, impossibly large, hulking figure beat back every futile attack his opponents attempted. A sudden shock of lighting burst forth, ripping through the skies, sending the Berk hero desperately diving away, somersaulting, turning around again, socking a jaw, dodging a launch of fire and a roundhouse kick from two simultaneous assaulters. Light and dark and light and dark the world pulsed as superability matched superability, fire and lightning and superstrength and some strange form of amplified flexibility.

From the background, more words. Male voice. "…flying in from above, more members of the league and their sidekicks…"

The teen could spy the back-up sweeping in now on helicopters above and vehicles below, rushing in on motorcycles or running deftly on foot flipping over obstacles, each in accordance to their unique superhuman abilities.

"…Nightmare…" a sidekick shooting the world into flames almost moreso than his arson-intended Outcast targets…

"The twins, double-teaming to take down…"

These two sidekicks the young observer could not see from his limited perspective, though he certainly had watched them work before with enormous envy…

"Mindlock, the human computer…"

A geeky, sedentary, yet still enormously impressive superhero assistant, whose mind retained vast quantities of information, situated on the ground away from the action relaying relevant information through earbuds to other members of the team…

"…and the young weather-controlling heroess…"

The teen, whose face had been pressed obsessively against the window panel to the point of squashing his cheeks into a pan face, suddenly screeched in shock as an unexpected angry pinch pulled his ear roughly backward. The explosions, the superheroes, the sidekicks, the urban Berkian landscape – all of it disappeared as he was rearward pulled – and with that visual loss, came the simultaneous loss of entertainment. He cartwheeled away from the window – this time _did_ trip on one of the objects on his floor – and crashed into the great, bulky belly of the man responsible for yanking his pinna.

A somewhat-gruff tenor voice exclaimed, "Hiccup! What are you doing? Are you _asking_ to be carried off and kidnapped by one of the Outcasts?"

"Who, me?" the teen inquired, pulling himself away from the other man in the room and attempting not to glare too obviously up at him. The grubby, blonde-bearded man received a sarcastic quip instead. "Naw, they couldn't carry me off. They wouldn't know what to do with all this… superpowerful…"

The man before him raised a pair of skeptical hamster-thick eyebrows to the top of his bald head. He opened his mouth to a set of horrifically uneven teeth to remark, "You know, you might as well just admit by now…"

"Oh, come on, Gobber! I need to get out there. All those superheroes and sidekicks are doing something so much _cooler_ than what I'm doing! I need to go out and make my mark." He gestured frantically toward the television screen, now showing a live footage image of a squat tangle-haired girl about his age scaling straight down the side of a building.

But Gobber prodded him with one sausage finger right in the gut. "Hiccup. No. You've _made_ your mark, all in the wrong places."

Hiccup deflated, glancing downward uncomfortably. His mind immediately recalled an incident from last month, one which certain made a rather literal and very… permanent… mark on the side of the side of city hall. One which construction teams were still repairing. And would be for a rather long while.

_At least I managed to avoid similar damage to the library…_

"Maybe if I had some training," Hiccup grumbled, "like every other teen my age connected to the league of heroes, then I wouldn't be making marks like that."

"Hiccup, you know _exactly_ why they're in training and you're not."

This time, he did not hide the glare he gave Gobber. In fact, he sought to make it as angry and potent as possible. He gestured around his bedroom, which, though only cast in the light of the television screen, still very noticeably boasted an incredibly collection of advanced technological gear, metal panels stacked on shelves and spilling out onto the floor; a soldering iron, discarded motherboards, and drafts for cloaking devices and microbots scattered across the surface of a cluttered desk; and even the closet bursting forth in spare parts and old experiments. "I have _more_ than enough talent in other areas to be accepted into the junior league. There's no reason to hold me back from fighting criminals and upholding justice and…" he started fumbling with his hands, gesturing excitedly in some vague gesture that made him appear like a cat clawing at a scratching post.

"Your father's choice is your father's choice, and it's final." Gobber began to turn away.

But Hiccup was not yet done with his line of argumentation. The scrawny boy raised his voice to point out, increasingly frustrated, "He made that choice without listening to me. And he _never _listens –"

"– runs in the family –"

"– and when he does, it's with this disappointed scowl on his face. Like – like –"

Gobber butted into the conversation a second time. "Look, the point is, stop trying so hard to be something you're not. You'll never be a superhero and you're father's right in that. You know it, too."

Hiccup sighed. The soft noise was masked by the sudden rocking of an explosion coming down several streets down. "I just want to be one of you guys." He turned away and walked right toward the window again, this time not pressing his face against the glass, but crossing his arms and resting both of his elbows on the ledge. This time Gobber did not yank him away. He cocked his head, listening to something not itself in Hiccup's room.

"Look, I uh, just got a call in my earbud from your father to come in for back-up. So. I'll be going. And you… stay… put."

Hiccup glared back as Gobber left the room, pursing his lips irritably. And with determined resolve, he marched up to the shelves in the corner of his room, snatched up a rather impressive looking self-made firearm, and pulled out from his closet a pair of boots with jets attached on the bottom. It was not a minute after Gobber left that Hiccup himself departed the room – though he through the window rather than the door. He cranked the glass open, ran to the far end of the room, and with a determined charge _launched_ himself toward the opening, diving forward, and plunging head-first out the seventh story.

He clapped his feet together, the jets puttered, and Hiccup aimed his heels to launch him toward the fray.

Sudden burst of energy. The world converted into an enormous stream of darkness and parallel lines all directed toward him. His entire body jittered at the propelling speed. Lights streaked forward, and he had to concentrate to understand his visual stream.

_Streetlamp!_

He leaned backward against the propelled momentum of his boots, cracked his stomach straight into the arch of the streetlamp, and began spiraling forward, forward, forward, spinning around uncontrollably in aerial somersaults.

He screamed. Something – _something_ – large and flat spun toward him at a rapid rate. The side of a building, the sidewalk – he could not tell – could not distinguish up or down or north or south or anything at all – only that he would collide.

_Must… gain… control!_

He tried to pull back and kick with his feet in the direction of his collision.

Hiccup stopped.

The world rightened itself. Sort of. His feet hovered over the side of a skyscraper near a window, and he stared downward toward the darkened alleyway below, hovering over the earth perhaps by fifteen feet. He was angled ninety-degrees away the direction gravity would expect him to stand. Circular trashcan lids stared up at him judgingly along with one rather stunned feral cat which for some reason had not fled to shelter during the warning sirens' ring.

_That was… close._

Hiccup could hear himself panting, feel his entire torso shudder with every frantic inhale. _Note to self: recalibrate thrusters later._

And then his boots spluttered and died.

He screamed as he hurled downward again, this time with no way to prevent a collision. The cat yowled, the trashcans smashed against him, and he tumbled into them and bounced off and smacked his body into the alley's cold pavement, head spinning and dazed. Some foul odor emanated over him, and he belated realized that, during his fall, he had knocked over one of the garbage cans and splattered… _something_... it was rotten and sticky… all over his hoodie. But he was more concerned about the pain in his hip. His side had taken the crux of the fall, and he cold feel it keenly. Hiccup groaned. _That'll be a colorful bruise. Always wanted to be a human rainbow._ Hiccup rolled from his side, lay flat-back against the concrete, and stared upward into the sky in the direction he had just fallen.

A shadow swept over his eye.

A face leaned in. Cloaked in darkness but for two goggled, shining eyes.

_Outcast._

Hiccup screeched.

Enormous blade – was that part of the man's _arm_ – flying down. Roll to the side, flinch, hear the crunch of metal against pavement. Glance up. Glowing eyes. Blade. Dodge again, slam against a surface, curl into a ball against the brick wall with which he had collided. Flinch, wait for pain.

Someone else's scream.

Suddenly the narrow alley channeled a torrent of air. Rushing rapids could not produce such force as the screaming, _solid_ tempest hurling between rows of buildings. Crack of light zigzagging through – lightning – immediate gunshot _boom_ of thunder – and a torpedoing form in the eye of the storm. With a screech she launched herself into the Outcast.

Hiccup stared, wide-eyed, as a woman not much taller than he took on this enormous menace. She screamed with the fury of a tornado – she _was_ a tornado – from her voice emitting howling winds and high-pitched screeches of propelling squalls and the impossibly deep groans of corkscrewing, two hundred mile an hour airstreams. Blue eyes boiled, a moonbeam glow shooting out her enraged, screaming face. Trash cans and rubbish and every last pebble flew toward the Outcast, battering him, bashing him, as she hovered there, directing the shots, cursing out unheard words, howling at the center of her tempest. Only Hiccup, still curled and flinching against the side of a building, remained in the alley; all else shot directly into the woman's opponent.

Who immediately fled, rushing away, intimidating no more.

Storm Fly settled to earth.

Winds ceased. Everything calmed. Hiccup, awed, gawked. He had seen more than enough footage of this young superhero-in-training, news reels and interviews and publicity footage – and indeed followed her quite religiously, placing a poster of her up in the room – yet it was all another thing to meet Storm Fly face-to-face. She was more stunning in person than even he had imagined. There she was, crackling blue eyes and thick, long blonde hair braided messily back, and a lithe, muscular body accentuated by the form-fitting clothing she wore.

Hiccup's mouth felt dry, and it took him a long time to realize he was smiling cheesily up at her. He tried to clamp that gape shut as soon as he realized it, hoping she did not notice.

Storm Fly walked toward him with a self-confident sway of her hips – quite noticeable in her tight superhero uniform – and leaned in toward him. But before he could stutter even the first "th" of "Thank you," she pulled back her arm, opened up her palm, and _slapped_ him – hard.

"What do you think you were doing? You could have been killed! Civilians inside!" Her voice no longer carried the amplitudes of howling storms, yet fury enough burst out of her adolescent voice. She grabbed the baggy folds of his hoodie and lifted him slightly off the ground. Storm Fly started to shake him. He began feeling dizzy, almost more dizzy than when he had spiraled through the skies a moment before. "It's hard enough fighting to save this city from _smart_ citizens without having to deal with idiots like you!" She glared at the ray gun tucked to Hiccup's side and scrutinized his boots. "Idiots like you without superpowers who try to save Berk but just end up getting in the way and making everything worse."

While first Hiccup had been speechless for her impressive presence, now he could not utter a word out of the sheer embarrassment of her chastisement.

She might never have met him before, but every stinging word was completely true.

Storm Fly dropped him, turned away, disgusted, and marched down the street in a pair of sleek boots. "Next time, stay inside. Save us the trouble."

Hiccup did not move for a long time. He thumped his head back against the wall and sat there, waiting for his pounding heart to calm. That never fully happened, but at least the throbbing slowed. Somewhat. Hiccup clenched his teeth together, angry with himself and his failures, and lashed out against himself with just as much fury as Storm Fly just had. Perhaps even more, for this was just one of many failures he had experienced in the past year.

_You incompetent idiot! Can't you do something right at least once?_

He listened to the sounds of fighting die down across the street, guessing the superheroes had successfully suppressed the Outcast attack.

_Why can't I save someone? Why can't I be like my dad, 'Berk's greatest hero'? Shouldn't I have gotten his superstrength? Or Mom's weredragon genes? Or any stupid superpower at all?_

In a world full of superheroes, in a world full of extra-human abilities, it hurt more than anything to be "normal". To lack any ability at all.

Hiccup punched the concrete beneath his hand before standing up, brushing himself off, and limping back home, hurrying to return to the apartment before his father could even suspect he had tried – and failed – _yet_ _again_ – to be something special.


	2. Chapter 2: Initiation

As chances would have it, his father arrived home before Hiccup did.

The teen could tell simply from glancing upward to the seventh story of his apartment building and spotting the glow of electric lights. The window leaking out a fluorescent glow belonged to his father's office, and Hiccup well-knew it had been shut off not too long ago, before he had catapulted himself out the window and foolishly attempted to save the day. For it did feel extraordinary foolish now, hiking home with clunking boots and the still-lingering scent of trashcan refuse staining his hoodie. And next he would have to trudge indoors and admit this blockbrained adventure to his father.

Oh, he would not be pleased at all. Not in the least.

Hiccup could imagine his dad's scowl already.

And, so greatly dreading the inevitable displeasure of his father's countenance, Hiccup upon entering the apartment complex quite intentionally chose not to take the elevator, but climb up the stairwell and prolong that confrontation. It would give him a chance to think, anyhow, about what he could say. Not to mention avoid anyone else in the building who might use the lift; the stairs, far quieter, were a surer path to Hiccup avoiding any unwanted eyes staring at his oversized boots and curious firearm strapped to his side.

So he trudged miserably step over step by himself. Methodically his feet thumped up the staircase, leaving his mind to plan precisely how he would spin the tale of his meeting with Storm Fly. In the best of luck, his father had not heard a word of suspicious speech from Storm Fly, had clomped straight into his office without realizing his son's absence, and would not hear the door open when Hiccup attempted to sneak inside. For this case, Hiccup would not need to even mention the incident, let alone defend his involvement in it. Yet a host of harrowing hypotheticals seemed far more likely to occur, and thus Hiccup began formulating his excuse.

His account could not be _too_ radically different from the full truth in case the adept female superhero-in-training had reported the incident to Hiccup's father. For maybe she had. An even if she passed on only incredibly vague details about a boy in ridiculous rocket bots running out to fight Outcasts, then his father would indubitably, immediately deduce that that report described his son. He would not even have to ask.

Second story. Hiccup continued trudging upward.

His mind fumbled with numerous ideas, juggling alternate formulations, discarding faulty farces with increasing frequency, so that as he ascended the apartment levels – third story, fourth story – more and more ideas he generated he now threw out as inadequate. And though he desperately sought to conjure some new, strong idea, by the time he was halfway up to the fifth story, he had already reluctantly acceded nothing he spoke would suffice; and by the time he reached the sixth, he had begun steeling himself mentally and physically for a wholly uncomfortable conversation. Then far, far too quickly, he reached the seventh level, stepped down the calm, clean hallway to his family's apartment door, and reached, cringing, for the doorknob. He typed out the passcode to the apartment, 0229, and gently, overly gently, pushed the door inward. He heard a quiet click as it unlocked.

Hiccup opened the door only as much as needed to slip his skinny frame through the gap, nearly caught his foot in the ajar door doing so, and crept hurriedly toward the back of the apartment where his safe have room awaited him. For with a quick, wide-eyed glance to the right, Hiccup noted his father had indeed retreated to the office, and that if he stepped carefully, his parent might never learn this evening's incident occurred.

It was incredibly difficult and borderline hazardous to try to tiptoe in his clunky books. To avoid crashing on his face, he had to settle for a measured, hurried roll-step instead, which caused the wood paneled floor to creak horribly at some points, but at least sounded quieter than a thumping regular step. It turned out to be quiet enough, too; not a rustle came from the light-lit office as Hiccup passed. And then he was down to the end of the hallway, could open and close his door, and heave out an enormous sigh of relief.

He was never this lucky.

Never.

_Well, I can be thankful for this well-timed exception._ Shuffling to his bed to sit down – his desk chair currently housed an overgrown family of school binders and textbooks – Hiccup leaned down to pull off his boots.

As soon as he tugged off the left one, he could diagnose precisely why the jets had failed. An enormous fracture grew from the sole of his boot, breaking the nozzle completely in half, and zigzagging upward along the ankle. Though his memories could verify none of it, Hiccup postulated that when he had smacked his stomach against the streetlamp bar, his foot had collided as well.

_Or maybe when I fell on those trashcans…_ He certainly had hit the ground hard enough at that point, too, to explain the broken boot. With a purse-lipped grimace, Hiccup threw the boot into the corner of the room, recognizing, _I'll have to start almost completely from scratch to fix that damage._

_ I guess it never worked that well anyway. At least it's just a boot and not my actual foot… can always be repaired and replaced._

He had the time now to fix it, being as there was no point falling asleep again this late into the night. However, he hardly felt in the mood. Hiccup dumped his school supplies from the chair on the floor, shoved aside papers covered in equations, and before he could glace at even a simple _F = mv__e__ + (p__e__ – p__o__)A__e_, he pulled out a sheet of clean paper and began to doodle. Not even good doodling – mere frustrated scribblings. Little form, little technique, and definitely no recognizable objects – mostly just jagged geometric shapes. He simply needed to vent his emotions somehow, and this poor paper and the pencil's hard-pressed graphite took the toll.

In the middle of drawing a particularly vicious, jagged line along the left edge of the page, Hiccup heard from behind him the main apartment door once more open and shut, this time loudly and with no careful shutting of the door – indeed rather slamming it, probably waking neighbors. Heavy, lumbering footsteps followed. The distinct gait alone identified this visitor; one foot shuffled more softly, the other clunking unapologetically loudly against the wood floor. And Hiccup only knew one man with a robotic limb: Gobber, his father's sidekick. Someone who visited the home so regularly he might as well have moved officially in with father and son.

_My father almost treats him more as family than he does me._ The next line on the page was remarkably jabbed.

Granted, Gobber's company could be rather appreciable when he was not busy yanking Hiccup away from windows and attempting to dissuade him from his superhero pursuits.

"Stoick?" the sidekick's distinct voice called out. When he heard no response, he unabashedly repeated even louder this time, "Stoick?!"

"In the office, Gobber!" an irritated response cut out from the south side of the house.

"Of course. You're always in there."

"I'm trying to work."

"At four thirty in the morning?" Gobber's voice suddenly became muffed, indicting he had moved into the office and shut the door behind him. But Hiccup could still hear both of them anyway, and found his ear turned in the direct of the office while he drew.

"The reports need to be filled out before the morning's meeting with the senior league members and city officials. You know that."

"You need to break sometime, though. I'd recommend a bit of shut-eye."

"You're up."

"I suppose so. Listen, Stoick, since we're both still awake… I think maybe I need to bring something up about Hiccup."

Fiddling pencil immediately halted. Idle listening changed to straining, attentive ears.

_He didn't see me jump out the window or anything, did he?_ All at once, he realized that window _still_ was open. Half-hurling over his desk, Hiccup reached out to shut the panel and remove at least some of the evidence from his late night escapade. Throwing off his reeking hoodie would probably help, too. It ended in a pile of dirty laundry at the foot of his closet. Then, those tasks done, he leaned his ear toward Stoick's office and awaited his father's response.

It came slowly. "What about him? He didn't try to go out and fight again tonight, did he?"

"Well… no. No, I don't think so. Just watched the action tonight."

Well, that relieved a portion of stress. That little comment from Gobber suggested neither adult knew about his actions. Yet this did not fully quell Hiccup's nervousness as he eavesdropped; in some ways, actually, it amplified worry. After all, this only heightened Hiccup's curiosity about what possibly Gobber would need to discuss about him. _Did I do something else wrong?_

Stoick, in response to Gobber, grunted, "That'd be a first. Good. Maybe he's finally starting to wrap around his that he shouldn't be outside during a superbattle."

"Actually…" Gobber's voice trailed off awkwardly. "I was thinking he _should_ be out there."

"What?" Stoick asked, expressing aloud the very same word of surprise popping in Hiccup's mind.

"As a junior league member. Put him in training with the others."

Hiccup stared, baffled and blind, at the papers on his desk. _He's vouching for me? After the conversation we had earlier?_

But Stoick said, "Gobber, _no_. Hiccup is many things, but a superhero is not one of them. He'd die before he even faced his first Outcast face-to-face. He wouldn't even stand up to the beginner's level simulations."

"You don't know that."

"I do know that, actually."

"No, you don't!"

"Listen, you know what he's like. From the time he could crawl I knew… he's just a regular boy. He doesn't have a single superpower. He can't even qualify for a sidekick as he is."

"I know you're disappointed that your son doesn't have any superpowers. But those aren't the only abilities out there someone can have. It's time you recognized that your son has plenty of gifts of his own."

"I never said he didn't."

"But you've never really given him the environment to grow his talents, either. Have you seen all the projects he has going on in his room? I've only shown him how to do half of that. Less than half. And all his ideas are his own. He might not be able to throw a bus or run faster than the speed of sound, but maybe he doesn't need any of that to be a hero. If he uses what he makes in place of superpowers, he…"

"No. Even if he could get half of his 'projects' to work, that doesn't change anything about the fact he's tiny, or – or completely incapable in a fight, or has the attention span of a sparrow. A hero's just not who he is, Gobber. He's… he's like a boy who wants to be a doctor but gets queasy at the sight of blood."

_Well, thanks for the vote of confidence, Dad._

Gobber appeared not dissuaded by Stoick's quick rejection. "But Hiccup won't know that being a superhero might or might not work for him. He has to have his own experience to understand. And he might surprise you yet. Give him the chance, Stoick. You can't protect him forever. You can only prepare him."

Hiccup, not even daring to breathe, waited for his father to yet again reject Gobber's suggestion.

Nothing.

Neither affirmative or negative. If his father responded in any way at all, it must have been gesturally, just a nod or a shake of his head, and Hiccup could only imagine which one it was. He could not even infer anything from Gobber's follow-up, for he remained silent, too; but for a soft click of the opening office door, Hiccup heard nothing.

Nothing until the morning with the blaring of his alarm clock.

* * *

><p>His Literature and Composition course could not pass quickly enough. He slumped in his chair, contemplating whether or not he could sneak a short nap at the back of the classroom while his teacher, Mr. Yobbish, yammered endlessly on and on regarding the thematic development of revenge within "Hamlet." The rest of the class dutifully flipped along in their texts with the lecture, though more than a few gaping yawns passed like an increasingly competitive sport around the room. No one, of course, had slept well, what with last night's Outcast raid. Everyone – not just Hiccup – had reason to nod off in class. He just seemed to be suffering the worst.<p>

Nothing new there.

"And if you flip to Act III Scene iv and go down to line 173, read with me, 'heaven hath pleased it so, / To punish me with this, and this with me, / That I must be their scourge and minister'. If you notice, the appeal to heaven suggests that Hamlet considers his revenge 'right' in a sense, but if you continue onto the next line…"

Only one good event had come out of the morning when Hiccup woke: his father had already left the house for work. There consequently had passed no awkward conversations of any sort – not about Storm Fly saving some stupid by on the streets, not about the conversation which transpired between him and Gobber last night. The morning passed fully uneventfully.

And so had continued the rest of the school day. Not as though courses ever really intrigued Hiccup, but today he struggled to even _feign_ attention. Not even other students' conversations during off period on Mindlock and Push and Pull and Storm Fly could engage him, when usually chatter – especially on that last superpowered sidekick's name – piqued his undivided interest. Now, though, superhero small talk amplified his misery and reminded his of his past – and presently lingering – abashment.

"Perhaps this is part of the reason why he becomes so upset upon encountering Yorick's skull being treated irreverently in the first scene of Act Five. The severity of death and what killing means…"

Even his best friend noticed Hiccup's unsettlement earlier today, pushing thick rounded glasses up a heavily pimpled nose bridge, and worriedly stuttering, "D-d-d-did something happen last night?"

"Don't want to talk about it."

"Did you set anything on f-f-fire again?"

"We're not talking about it."

"You _did_, didn't you?"

"What about 'not talking about it' do you fail to understand?"

For now, seated in English, listlessly listening to Yobbish rattle about Shakespeare, Hiccup felt a horrid, horrid weight in his gut. Embarrassment. Shame. He had not wanted to speak to his friend the incident… nor even acknowledge to himself what had occurred.

Contrary to typical, he did not want to hear Storm Fly's name at all now or anything in connection to superheroes and sidekicks.

_She's right. I'm a civilian. Someone without any superpowers. I deserve to be indoors._

"Now flip to Scene Two. Can someone tell me about Hamlet's words when he says, 'Then venom, to thy work'?"

_Stuck inside places like this._

Mistakes, he had made before. Many times. Many worse that this last one. He'd felt the shame of his father rescuing him several times, too. Never before had such failings deterred him. Yet hearing criticisms from Storm Fly hit something hard in him, brought out his personal incapabilities in their full horrendous visage, and descended upon him a decision that maybe he wished not be a superhero after all.

Perhaps Gobber had tried vouching for Hiccup last night. But his dad was right. Hiccup could never succeed in this vein.

It was time to give up his dream.

Accept reality.

Do something else with his life.

Anything. Anything at all. He did not know what exactly… just _something._ Even if it were digging holes in the middle of some distant desert, that life would instigate more good ends than gallanting around pretending to fight those non-existent criminals against whom he could hold his own.

Above his head, the school bell rang, cutting into Yobbish's voice. He transitioned immediately from a remark about Claudius into a quick farewell, ending, "No homework tonight".

Class dismissed. The final course of the day, over.

_Finally. _Hiccup dragged himself out of his chair, picked up his copy of "Hamlet" with his left hand, and shuffled straight to his locker with no shortage of yawning. A similar dazed trudge took him subsequently outdoors to the parent pick-up drive-up loop, bleary eyes searching out Gobber's car.

He found his father's instead. Surprised – typically his dad's sidekick chauffeured him to and from high school, as indeed he had this morning – Hiccup stepped very cautious up to the car's massive emerald green door and peeked inside to gauge the emotion on his father's countenance before slipping his backpack and himself into the vehicle.

His father's strength might have been a rather standard superpower, but Stoick "Skullcrusher" Haddock was no standard man. A thick, seven foot tall wide-shouldered giant with a beard the size of a small dog, Hiccup's incredible father looked more as though he should enter a Viking legend than a contemporary apartment. Arms thicker than Hiccup's entire torso hung down on either side of such a beefy body it would make a cow abashed. _At least,_ Hiccup thought drily to himself, squeaking into the seat of the car beside of his heroic father, _he's not wearing any of his armor, which makes him look even _bigger. When he wore his full super suit, Stoick appeared as though he would crush far, far more than skulls with a single flick of his pinky finger. As it was, his bloated hands appeared to be suffocating the steering wheel beneath them.

"Hey Dad," Hiccup mumbled, wishing his voice did not sound so squeaky. Hiccup had been hoping to raise his voice to utter something simply intonationally casual. He tried again with his next sentence. A little better. "What're you doing here. You don't usually drive me home."

_Please don't be about Storm Fly. Please don't be about Storm Fly._

The vehicle lurched forward with the same sort of impatient power stretched along Stoick's biceps. Hiccup's father had never been a gentle driver. Face unnervingly even, Stoick answered, "Son, we're not going home."

* * *

><p>Hiccup's green eyes nearly popped out of his skull when his father parked the car.<p>

"We're not… we're not… Dad, I'm not _allowed_ in here."

"Yes, son, you are. Grab your backpack." Stoick's hand squeezed beneath the steering wheel to turn off the ignition, scrunched up his elbows to reach the handle on the door, and let himself and his heavy gut out of the car. Hiccup sat a moment longer before he even remembered to reach for his seatbelt, and then he threw himself out of the vehicle and rushed up to his father in such a hurry he nearly tripped on the parking lot blacktop. His backpack thunked heavily against his back as he trotted to keep up with his father's long strides.

"But Dad, this is only for superheroes!"

"And their sidekicks," Stoick said. Turning around to smile at his son, Berk's fabled Chief of Security announced, "Welcome to Berk Superhero Security Headquarters."

An expansive eight story building, wide, tall, and proud as a stadium, stretched upward to the skies. Multiple wings of the structure jutted outward, upper stories boasting wide panels of windows, lower stories more conservatively painted in a somehow impressive gray paint. Security men and women stood sentry at enormous double-doors – far larger than necessary, at least to regular humans. But Hiccup, glancing to his left as he followed his father out of the parking lot and toward that entrance, noticed a larger-than-normal woman stomping out, some heroine blessed with giantess size as her power.

"Wow," Hiccup murmured as they neared the doubled-doors. Stoick gave a casual nod-off to each of the guards standing there, murmuring, "Hello, Starkard. Hello, Mrs. Ack," before boldly yanking the handles and swaggering through the entrance. Hiccup tried to nod to the guards as well – decided he probably looked like an idiot after he did so – and abashedly scrambled after his father before the doors could shut on him.

And then he stopped straight in his tracks.

The inside of headquarters were even more impressive than the outside. For here, men and women of all talents, wearing the bright uniforms of Berk's vigilantes, bustled about on their official business. Hiccup almost backed into a man whose skin grew entirely in spikes like a porcupine, who in turn stepped up to a shapeshifter crossing four pairs of arms, who in turn was speaking to her friend who appeared to be occasionally sparking lighting. And as Hiccup's head roved around, more and more and more incredible superheroes passed through the hallways, ones with gills and dorsal fins, or pterodactyl-like skin flaps stretch to their forearms, or enormously large, block-like heads, or impossibly bulky muscles, or even one man who was so thin he literally could have been a sheet of paper.

"Son, don't get lost."

Blinking, Hiccup reattuned his gaze toward his father, and wordlessly followed the thick-bearded giant down a well-lit hallway.

"I – I – I can't believe it!" Hiccup stuttered as he caught up once more with Stoick. The superhero did not even glance downward as the teenager babbled. "I never thought you would do this. Take _me_ inside the superhero base? Give me the chance to meet these people up close with my own eyes? Oh my god! Dad, did you see that? We just passed Archwings and – and – and _Ultramage_ – and –"

His father raised one eyebrow at Hiccup, and the teenager silenced himself. For a moment.

"Dad…"

"Yes?"

"Are you really taking me here to, you know?" Hiccup did not dare say his thoughts aloud in case his assumptions were wrong. It would make him appear a fool if he had guessed incorrectly.

Stoick took a left, stared up at the wall, and then punched the door for an elevator. It opened immediately, allowing father and son to enter together. It was a small elevator, one barely large enough to accommodate the two of them – or rather, barely large enough to accommodate Stoick – for he appeared to be occupying ninety percent of the space in the room, while Hiccup had to squeeze himself up against the far corner to make room for his tiny frame. He watched his dad poke a button to take them to the fourth floor.

"I am taking you here to meet your peers. You will begin training with the Junior League starting tomorrow. This means I am pulling you from school and moving you here. The league's trainees all live here."

"I'm going to be _living_ with superheroes?" Hiccup gasped.

His father seemed to becoming irritated at his son's extraordinary exuberance. "Yes. With other boys and girls your age. Now come on." The elevator door opened. "It's time to meet them."

Hiccup felt immediately uncertain. Now that he was actually receiving his wish – his unlikely wish – to train as one of Berk's heroes, he suddenly felt afraid to step forward into the lobby where his father and future life awaited him. Hiccup had to force himself to crawl into the expansive lobby and step up to the thick-waisted and big-chested secretary who sat behind the room's single desk. A nametag on her chest titled her simply "Bertha".

_What if none of the other trainees accept me because I don't have any powers?_

"Yes, this is my son. Hiccup?"

Hiccup stepped timidly forward to meet the secretary eye-to-eye. She studied him dubiously from behind a pair of wide cheeks, harrumphing, "He doesn't look much like you, Skullcrusher."

"I – I've been told I take after my mother," Hiccup responded. He only had one photograph of his mother from back when he was an infant, but that had shown a woman with a much slenderer physique, if not exactly as scrawny as fifteen-year-old Hiccup so was.

"Do you." The secretary's droll intonation indicated she hardly cared. "Well then, Skullcrusher, your son has been officially inputted and registered into the system, just like you asked earlier today. He should be all set. He will come with me today and learn the layout, meet the other trainees, and find his new room. Tomorrow he can move all his belongings in, yes?"

"Yes, that is good." Stoick cleared his throat. "Well then, son." He placed an awkward hand on Hiccup's shoulder. It covered up the boy's entire arm to the elbow. "I will wait for you here."

"Thanks, Dad."

And Hiccup followed the secretary to his new life.


End file.
